The Desert Mermaid

Have transposed quite a few songs and am working on learning Midna's Theme. It goes the full range my ocarina can give, which means trying to figure out how to play the high notes without it going all thin. It's making me miss my music critic of a budgie, though. Piners was not a fan of music practice. The shrieks she'd emit when my sister practiced were clearly conveying the timeless critical remark, "Your music's bad and you should feel bad!"

Also, I'm trying to work out arhod mathematical notation and terminology, because I am a god damn nerd. I do like that they refer to an ellipse as a bwarn bweltapte, though--because marhematics aside, they really are "squashed circles," y'know. I am really loving that I can put Office files on the Nook, too--makes it easier to lug my conlang dictionary and grammar overviews around. Damn, I love the future.

(I am also posting from my Nook right now. BECAUSE I CAN,DAMMIT.)

Finding The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Book of Lists at the library and just about peeing myself thinking of the conlanging potential in a giant book of wordlists.

SO. MANY. WORDS. In CATEGORIES! And LEVELS! Oh, god, my inner creative linguist and my inner bureaucrat are the happiest personifications on Earth.

Well, lately the most interesting thing in my life has been the weather. Fortunately, it's the kind of interesting that doesn't involve flooded basements or felled power lines; it's the kind of interesting that makes you scream "WHAT THE HELL IT IS MAY 24TH WHY DID TWO INCHES OF SNOW JUST SPLAT ONTO EVERYTHING OH GOD SOMEBODY KIDNAPPED SUMMER."

Today it's bright and sunny and warming up. Now, that's just not fair. Pick a season, Utah. We're at war.

In other news, this here Language Construction Kit is a ton of fun. It inspired me to finally get around to making relative clauses in Rredra, and caused me to have a double revelation when I realized that the structure I had come up with for relative clauses in this conlang mirror my own informal idiolect--and that my own informal idiolect is mutating relative clauses. For example, instead of saying "the doctor who is wearing a coat," I wind up saying "the coat-wearing doctor," or changing "it's a bakery that makes delicious English pastries" into "it's a delicious-English-pastry-making bakery." Not an unusual phenomenon, I suppose, but I think I've been doing it more now than I used to, and with a broader range of possible clauses that can be switched around this way.

It's making me wonder if I've seen it around. I can think of one person online who does this all the time, but I don't know if I just picked it up from him, if I had it before him, or if it's a broader phenomenon.

This book also allows me to feel terribly clever when it gives the basics of semantics and I realize I am quite savvy about how to make words that aren't all just English equivalents. I think Mark gets a little carried away at times with linguistic deconstruction, but then I've always been a bit impatient with some of the sub-fields of pragmatics.

Meanwhile, I'm also getting impatient with sitting around in Dad's office listening to the sounds of inactive phones and shrieking children discovering the joys of vaccination on the other side of the wall. I think I'll see if I can go home yet.

Speaking of conlangs, editing Episode 6 ground to a screeching halt yesterday when I came upon a note that I needed a name in the pídeba language for the magic ultraviolet temple sapphires. Because I am—y’know, who I am—I am not satisfied with tossing in sounds. Oh, no … I have to make the whole damn language.

Buggrit.

At least I’ve already worked out a crazy phonology for it, but I still have morphology and syntax to work out.

Anyway, I think I have the first few episodes pretty polished, and I’m going to print out a few copies of 1 and maybe 2 and show them around to family; 7 needs a lot of polish, and 8 still needs to be typed up and then polished, but it shouldn’t be too long now. And I’m interested in feedback from y’all, too, since at this point I have no idea if this story works. Any takers?

In The Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, And The Mad Dreamers Who Tried To Build A Perfect Language by Arika Okrent

To understand why I was a little personally disappointed with the book, you have to understand that conlangers, like any other tiny, highly specific subgroup, are bitterly divided. On the one side you have the auxlangers, whose primary goal is to build languages designed to be easy to learn and speak—international auxiliary languages. (For some weird reason, auxlangs often are derived from European linguistic roots.) On the other side, you get the conlangers, whose primary motive for building languages is because why the hell not.*

Basically, auxlangers believe that language is flawed and needs improvement; conlangers believe that language is pretty darn interesting the way it is and, in the way of an artist wanting to emulate and recreate and play with something they like themselves, they decide to build their own.

And though she begins her book with an anecdote on Klingon, Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages concentrates mostly on the auxlangers. I enjoyed her outlines of the changing goals of constructed languages and the history thereof, but I was disappointed with the very short chapter dedicated to the just-cuz conlangs of the present day. Sections devoted to John Wilkins’s philosophical language, Esperanto, and the interesting use found for Blissymbolics** tended to eclipse her mention of the languages constructed just for the sake of creative linguistics.

This had an interesting effect, too: her tales of the history of auxlangs rely heavily on both the wacky antics of the creators and to a lesser extent the users, and the overall effect is to make conlangers seem, well, a lot more sane than auxlangers. It’s true all the way through the book, too—the folks who embrace some auxlang less for some political ideal and more for simple appreciation seem consistently less bonkers than the ones yelling that their pet language will revolutionize the mind or the political landscape or something.***

And ultimately, she decides that improving language doesn’t work—she goes through the question of whether something’s a bug or a feature, and often comes down on the “feature” side for something the auxlangers would definitely mark a bug. She notes this is something the conlangers seem to feel, too, but she doesn’t really delve into why—you get only a glimpse of the idea of language appreciation, of the possibilities of anthropological linguistics or messin’ with modes of transmission through her somewhat baffled descriptions of Klingon and the Language Creation Conference. And the thing I was really hoping for—outlines and examinations of conlangs—pretty much didn’t exist.

So I’m not sure what I expected out of this book, but whatever it was this wasn’t it. It was interesting, but I will keep my eye out for other books on conlangs, and hope they’re actually about conlangs themselves.

(Also, she only mentioned Tolkien in passing. That’s like writing a history of the mystery story and only name-checking Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as “influential.”)


*There’s a third category that sort of straddles these two, actually—the engineered languages. They’re languages designed to meet some objective, logical goal or to be some experiment in linguistics. But it seems that depending on the creator’s goals, an engineered language can fall into either the auxlang or conlang category.

Also, bear in mind the conlang community might dispute these categories and nitpick. This is only fair.

**Which was fascinating, both for the interesting niche it found for itself—as a communication tool and stepping-stone into reading for children with cerebral palsy—and for the sheer, utter, unadulterated batshit of its creator.

***This despite the fact that she gives some of the weirder detailes of attending the Klingon Language Conference. Our ASL club at UO got weird enough stares when we’d go out for pizza. Klingons would be spectacular.

- OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS. Super Mario Bros. Wii is … is … it’s like three parts nostalgia and two parts COMPLETE CRACK. It takes all the great elements from the old Mario side-scrollers (Mushroom houses, the Koopa Kids, bonus games, pre-Yoshi’s Story Yoshi,* the sound effects, warping, item collecting) and some new elements (the streamlined Wii graphics, Ice Mario, cooperative multiplayer mode**) and mixes them up in a blender as a delicious mushroomy smoothie of Super Mario goodness.

It’s almost strange. Damn game zaps me back over the last … criminy, eighteen years or so? … of playing the everloving buhjeezus out of Super Mario World, working to get EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY SECRET THAT GAME WAS HUGE, swearing and screaming at the evil designs of the creators, and feeling like the world champion whe I got it. A game that makes me think of that one? Reminds me why I love gaming. And why my brother has seriously considered getting a tattoo of my pithy summation of that game: “FUCK TUBULAR.”

This is what I was looking for with the New Super Mario Bros. FINALLY.

- I dumped a book truck today! It was spectacular. I gave it a tug to get it moving in the right direction, but the wheel stuck, so instead of turning, the thing toppled over, spilling nonfiction all over my feet.*** And I’d just gotten the damn thing sorted, too.

A regular patron who seems to want to be my friend helped me a bit and then noted that he’d have fainted of embarrassment if it were him (he seems easily embarrassed, though). I told him that if anything, the cart should feel pretty stupid. It’s the one that tripped, after all.

- Having lost track of our tastes long ago, my aunt has resorted to the ill-reputed but eminently practical solution of just giving us money for Christmas. So today I went shopping online for presents from her. Hooray for Epiphany presents!

- I am staring in some trepidation at a wordlist for the Torn Tongue. Remember how I realized that I tend to sort of fade out of group projects? I’m unconsciously doing that with the Torn World work. I’m sort of self-conscious about a group project, which is paralyzing. I need to get it done. At least I have Langmaker to help me out.

- You know, I could write a whole thesis, point-by-point, with cross-references and proper citations, demonstrating all the reasons why tomorrow is going to suck. But that would make me too bummed out, so you can just take my word for it.


*I blame that game as the final catalyst for the Elmo-ization of Yoshi.

**Okay, some old arcade games had a form of this, but it’s a little bit like comparing a sharpened stick to an iPhone.

***There is a reason I never wear delicate open-toe shoes on this job. Even my sandals have big rubber toes.

Meanwhile, while I was sick my meme backlog has piled up. I hereby must respond to the memes or my ego will be unsatisfied I will have failed the internet. So let’s see, in order that they were received:

nobleplatypus demands my handwriting answer the following questions:
1. Write your username.
2. Write your 2 favourite bands/groups of the moment.
3. Write something you ♥, AKA lemme see your heart!
4. Write the name of your favourite person of all time.
5. Write the name of your recent favoured person.
6. Tag 6 people to do this meme.

She did not, however, stipulate that I had to answer with the truth.

That’s right, dudes, I have a LISA FRANK notebook. You are jealous.

bottledgoose had this meme:
1. Leave me a comment saying anything random, like your favorite lyric to your current favorite song.
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be asked, you will ask them five questions.

… and asked me these questions:
1) write a letter to me in one of your fun alien scripts!
2) tell me what it means, lol

Okay!


In the Roman alphabet:

Kwiryi Andee
Ka gwŕkarris mezhwubnug ashthekyu,
ishŕl mezhyak midzandghŕa Gherresa.
Lye ka sŕlash rrañif Rroerth tan ethlyi,
dher ki kipal ozkorris olye,
ish juvei esa ghesh frodha sŕyul olye kipal rrañirris ka.
Prat rroareafishŕl jeltsughazho.
Amelia

And it means:

( Hah! Now you HAVE to click! )

Oh, and I’ve been remiss!

Comment "WORDS" to this entry and I will comment back with five words I associate with you. Then you post this in your journal elaborating.

Here are kjpepper’s words.

Buzzcut – I love buzzes. It makes my head fun to rub (although it does seem to invite random people to come up and do just that), and it makes it a lot easier in the shower. For some reason, other people seem to think I can’t possibly actually like them.

Utah – Yes, I’m from Utah, and I’ve lived here since I was two. It’s a fabulous, beautiful state, but it’s full of crazy people. At least, one particular brand of crazy people. I’m not sure why I’m here since I’m a left-leaning liberal, but fortunately Salt Lake City isn’t entirely made up of right-wing hicks. For that, you want to go to Provo.

Conlang – I’ve been doing conlanging since I was but a wee little nerd. I think it was back when I was writing a story featuring Yoshi from Super Mario, and I decided to stick in a sentence in Yoshese. I realized that I’d have to make words that made sense, and suddenly it occurred to me that this was really fun. I was doomed.

It’s hard to count conlangs I’ve made, since degree of completion can be anywhere from several thousand words and a thorough grammar and history to a broad outline of a sound system. But I’ve got a few put together enough that I could translate a quote into one, put it in its own unique script, and tattoo it in a column down my back, so.

Currently I’m experimenting with nonverbal languages—sign languages, languages for aliens using scent and color, etc.. (gethenian may be amused to hear that my friend wants me to make up Klingon Sign Language. I imagine it would be very choppy.)

Lobot – That would be the guy with the stereo in his head who follows Lando Calrissian around in The Empire Strikes Back. He’s also dancing in my icon, taken from a clip in the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special that made my brother and me laugh so hard we fell off our couches.

Padparadscha – A beautiful pinkish-orange variety of corundum (aka sapphire). Jewelers are torn over whether that can refer to any pink-orange sapphire, or just a particular vein found in Sri Lanka. The name is derived from the Sanskrit term padma-raga, which means color of a lotus blossom. It’s the only variety of corundum other than the ruby to have its own official name. I love the color and love corundum.